1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for using contents, and more particularly, to a method and apparatus for using contents represented in a data format that allows it to easily find desired contents from a large number of music contents, a large number of video content, a large number of electronic book contents, and the like, by performing searching according to time information as a search key.
In the present description, the term “content” is used to denote content information represented in the form of signals such as music content, audio contents, video contents (movie contents, TV program contents, photographic image contents etc.) electronic book contents (text information and/or still image information of papers, novels, journals, etc.), news information contents, guide information contents, Web page contents, and program contents (computer program contents, game program contents, etc.).
2. Description of the Related Art
It is known to store contents in a content storage unit in association with date information or time information expressed in year, month, day, hours, minutes, and seconds, and find particular contents by searching the content storage unit by using time information as a search key.
For example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2004-259313 discloses a recording/playback apparatus capable of storing contents in a content storage unit in association with a title and a recording date, and displaying titles of contents found as a result of searching performed using a recording date as a search key thereby allowing it for a user to easily find a desired content.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2004-139576 discloses a technique of dealing with image data, including storing image data in a server together with date information indicating a date of taking an image, information indicating a starting place of a travel, a starting time, and a final destination, etc., input by a user, guessing a place on a travel route at which image data was taken on the basis of date information associated with the image data, reading associated data including, for example, other image data or text data associated with the guessed place at which the image data was taken, and producing album data from the image data and the associated data.